Rapper Meek Mill arrives at the criminal justice center in Philadelphia, Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. A Philadelphia judge has sentenced rapper Mill to two to four years in state prison for violating probation in a nearly decade-old gun and drug case. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The sentencing of Philadelphia rap artist Meek Mill to prison for probation violations committed a decade after his offense - and his release from prison this week by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court - has drawn attention to the contribution that probation and parole ("community corrections") play in mass incarceration.

Vincent Schiraldi (Columbia University photo)

Pennsylvania's disproportionate contribution to the "mass supervision" of nearly five million Americans (more than double the incarcerated number) was brought into sharp focus today by the release of The Pennsylvania Community Corrections Story by Columbia University's Justice Lab.

Founded as efforts to rehabilitate those who had broken the law by either diverting them from incarceration (probation) or expediting their release from prison for good behavior (parole), community corrections has grown far beyond what its founders could have ever imagined.

An alarming one in 34 adults in Pennsylvania and one in 22 adults in Philadelphia is under community corrections - well above the national rate of one in 53 adults.

There are nearly as many people under community supervision in Pennsylvania (296,000) as live in Pittsburgh (303,625). Pennsylvania has the highest parole supervision rate in the country, three times the national average.

Instead of serving as off-ramps to incarceration, probation and parole are substantial contributors to mass incarceration and a deprivation of liberty in their own right. The number of people under community supervision should be cut in half, reinvesting the savings into helping such people turn their lives around.

Jessica Jackson Sloan (Columbia University photo)

While sometimes thought of as a grant of mercy or a slap on the wrist, community supervision often drags on at great length serving as a trip wire ending in incarceration.

Lengths of parole and probation in Pennsylvania are particularly long. For example, while most states cap probation terms at 5 years, Pennsylvania permits supervision for the maximum term allowable for a particular offense, even though most of the value of supervision occurs in the first year or two of supervision.

That's why Mill was still on probation 11 years after his original offense.

Such lengthy terms cast a wide net that catches far more minnows than sharks. One-third of Pennsylvania's prison beds are occupied by people who have violated community supervision conditions, costing the state $420 million a year.

While 28 percent of admissions to prison nationally in 2014 were the result of a parole violations, 45 percent of prison admissions in Pennsylvania were. Half of those in the Philadelphia Jail are held on parole or probation detainers.

These punishments fall more heavily on African Americans than any other group.

One in 5 African American men without a high school education is under community supervision.

The Urban Institute found that revocation rates for African Americans on probation in several cities were higher than for similarly situated whites. This reality lead musician Jay-Z to write that community corrections "entraps and harasses hundreds of thousands of black people every day."

Reducing the footprint of probation and parole has become mainstream thought among community corrections officials.

In August 2017, the nation's leading probation and parole administrators and associations signed on to The Statement on the Future of Community Correctionsstating that "community corrections has become a significant contributor to mass incarceration" which should be considerably downsized.

Numerous jurisdictions have already found that less community corrections can go hand in hand with less incarceration and more safety.

From 1996 to 2014, New York City officials reduced the number of people on probation by 69 percent under Republican, Independent and Democratic mayors. During that time, violent crime fell by 57 percent and the city's incarceration rate fell by 55 percent.

Missouri policy makers granted 30 days of "earned compliance credit" for every 30 days of compliance under supervision.

From 2012 to 2015, there was a 20 percent reduction in the number of people under supervision and reconviction rates for those released early were the same as those discharged before the policy went into effect.

In order to curb the use of probation and parole in Pennsylvania, policy makers should shorten probation and parole terms and focus community resources on the first few years of supervision when they have the greatest impact; provide "earned compliance credit" time off supervision as incentives to positive performance; reduce returns to incarceration; reduce detention prior to reincarceration; and reallocate incarceration savings to fund housing, treatment, education and employment services for those under supervision.

Reducing the number of Pennsylvanians under supervision will improve public safety and reduce the system's unnecessary deprivation of liberty, while returning much needed legitimacy to community corrections.

Vincent Schiraldi is a Senior Research Scientist and co-founder of Columbia University's Justice Lab and former Commissioner of New York City Probation. Jessica Jackson Sloan is National Director of #cut50.

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